


refraction

by Anonymous



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, M/M, Mild Gore, this is for all intents and purposes a character study tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:21:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22072432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The list of what Kun didn’t know about the apocalypse includes many things, but on top was the fact that it would be an ongoing occurrence.
Relationships: Qian Kun/Qian Kun
Comments: 5
Kudos: 14
Collections: Anonymous, kuniversism





	refraction

**Author's Note:**

> written for prompt #52. to the prompter, if you see, I hope this is somewhat what you wanted.
> 
> the fest said kun-centric and obviously i took that WAY too seriously! i think i'm valid.
> 
> s, you're a star.

ONE.

The list of what Kun didn’t know about the apocalypse includes many things, but on top, in bold and underlined, was the fact that it would be an ongoing occurrence. He wasn’t the biggest fan of humanities as a student or undergrad, but he was a regular young boy, and sometimes that included procrastinating on genetics assignments by taking a deep dive into eschatology discussions on the internet. They were illuminating, and sometimes fun, and they all provided a variety of colorful ways the world would collapse in on itself.

Thing is, they all assumed it would be over much quicker than it did.

Four years, two months, and sixteen days since the pandemic hit, there’s still no end in sight. On his way to his accommodation establishment —small single room, no windows, a mattress on the floor as the only furnishing as always — he passes by five corpses in various stages of decomposition.

Kun remembers the ride from Bajul airport years ago; the low buildings, the occasional three-plus story one in between them grabbing the eye and the attention, the soil. The warm atmosphere from the weather and the warm atmosphere from the people.

There’s not much left of that now. He passes by five, maybe six cars in fifteen minutes. There’s more of them at the gas station. Their state reflects that of the building; abandoned, window glass broken and anything usable taken from the inside, original color unrecognizable from the dust.

If he closes his eyes, he can pretend he can step outside without a protective suit, feel the rays of the sun warm him to the bone.

If he closes his eyes.

-

He comes back to Earth fairly often, considering the circumstances. He’s lucky, in a way that reaches inside his ribcage, taunts around his heart, and knows is unearned, and he is part of the wealthy few that barely reach two million to have relocated to space stations. Relocated being the word used in official documents, all of them aware the reality is closer to escaped. He wasn’t a millionaire at the time of the apocalypse, nowhere close, but being a scientist was good enough for them. More than good enough, because they want to survive.

He wants to survive, too. More than that, he wants humanity to live. So, he comes down, comes to different places that he can’t fully appreciate, collects samples, returns to the metal walls that now are orbiting the earth like a second satellite.

This time, the dice rolls on the Gambia.

He can see, from the moment he leaves his room to start his routine that the people here fare much better. More open space, ochre-colored unpaved roads, the arable land, the tight organization that ran before the apocalypse still shows its signs now. With his hand lodged within a recently dead person’s belly, cutting intestines, placing them in air-locked bags, he can feel the signs of devastation, too.

-

The tests run slowly. Against the darkness outside, the labs are luminous, bright walls and brighter floors, shining under the fluorescent lights. Kun enjoys working in them because of that. Enjoys the routine they give him of cleaning up every few hours, everything used and dropped creating obvious stains against the white, blooming on all sides of the room.

He doesn’t enjoy the work itself as much. Knowing what he has to do, mapping out what he has to do, and finding the time and resources to do it are two paths that started as parallels, now diverging more and more with each passing day. The goal is simple enough, should be simple enough; save mankind. From the disease, at least. Kun bears no hope in saving them from themselves. The number of the dead climbs higher by the day by the double digits, the quarantines have long turned from _keep the infected inside_ to _keep whoever is still on any level of healthy inside_. He can’t remember the last time he made a call on any city with a population above two hundred thousand.

It’s been repeating. Standing over microscopes, watching screens, noting down findings, realizing he’s found another dead end. Snake eating its own tail. Years of work poured over this, with not much to show, and the constraints getting tighter and tighter with each stopped heartbeat.

So that’s why he’s found himself here. All-nighters and living off energy injections for as many weeks as he could before he crashed for 24 hours straight and started all over again. Sicheng almost stopped writing him prescription for them after the second time it happened, but he’s here, now. His creation is ready.

Well. Ready being relative.

It can stand on two legs _and_ it can walk. It can’t run, but the focus was on its ability to complete microtasks, more care and detail on the hands than any other part of the body. The skin was more elastic than a human’s, but easily to pierce. It looks natural, though, and that was the goal, to not spook others when encountering it.

Him.

If the day comes where he can’t continue his work soon, then at least now there is someone who can. In giving it — him — his own face, own build, own voice, there’s a narcissism and a necessity. Easier to copy, easier to apply.

He helps it stand, leaning against the wall, presses the on button for the first time. Holds his breath.

The android’s irises turn from pitch black to an unnerving cerulean blue. It blinks slowly at him.

Kun exhales. “We need to get you contacts, huh?”

***

TWO.

It works sufficiently.

It works well, if he’s honest. He engraves QK in the back of its neck under the fake skin, because if he starts with narcissism he may as well lean into it. It can’t be seen with the bare eye, but it marks him as the sole owner of his first successful test in… a long while. He’ll show his pride in as many ways as he can.

“This,” he pats the glass of the machinery, “is where you add whatever you need to add. Needles are in the first drawer. And this,” he touches the screen, “is where you get the results. Simple, right?”

The android blinks at him.

Kun sighs. “Humans show understanding. Show. With their body. Here,” he places his hand right under the android’s chin. “Move your head a bit down.” It does. “Good boy. Now back up. That’s called a nod. Means you get it.”

The android repeats the motions. Kun moves his hand to stroke the back of his head, the hair that’s just a touch lighter than his. “Good boy.”

-

He only uses it — him — to shorten the time at first. Hand on his heart. It is, however, too tempting, to know if someone came looking to see him working, they would technically find him working.

He feels a bit like a kid experiencing the first snow of the year again, watching the snowflakes fall and knowing that tomorrow he won’t have to go to school. Building a snowman in celebration, except now it’s spending hours in the Virtual Reality room, running across fake bridges and standing under fake waterfalls, feeling the phantom dampening of his clothes.

The android is always in the lab waiting for him. Sometimes, he gets kisses on the cheek.

-

The knowledge there’s someone back in the Station, going through all the backlog his work has left him while he can gather new data leaves Kun lightheaded. The possibilities, the number of them alone.

He walks the streets for one, two, three hours. This is a city he’s visited before, his parents took him with on their visits to friends. He can’t smell anything through the mask, but with his eyes closed he can envision the heaviness of the air. Can touch it, maybe, if he concentrates, if he stretches his imagination to its limits.

He gets what he needs within the first two days. He spends a third sitting on a bench, watching people, watching cyclists still go through pedestrians rather than utilise the plenty of space on the street.

-

He opens the door to the android reading _Nonsense, Sense: A Perspective On Human Behavior_. Kun sets his bags on the table carefully, lightly, goes to the fridge. The water starts going down the wrong pipe when he realizes he doesn’t own a book with that name.

“W-where did you find that?” he asks, almost every word underlined with a cough.

The android smiles. “Borrowed it from Ten. His room is a sweet little affair.”

“Sweet little what?”

He holds up the book. “Chapter three, subsection eighteen: _Words to use to describe a home, when you hate it_.”

Kun rubs his temples, a headache incoming. 150 kilometers per hour, destination: his head, because this wasn’t anticipated. Or predicted. “Go back, go back. How did you borrow it?”

“I walked to the door. I opened the door. I closed the door. I walked to the end of the corridor-”

“On your own?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not supposed to do that. You’re not sup- You’re just not.”

Kun, well. Stops there. There’s nothing to add to that. He paces. Bites his nails, mentally goes through code, all the possible openings.

The android follows his movements with his eyes. “You didn’t tell me not to. You said, _you’re not to leave this room unless needed_. I needed to learn to be human better.”

_But you_ _’re not_ , Kun doesn’t say, continues walking in circles. _You_ _’re not human. You’re supposed to be my aid, and hopefully something further. Something posthuman_.

***

THREE.

It turns into a tradition, of sorts. Almost every time he leaves the Station now he comes back to the clone, in some way, _studying humanity_. That being a direct quote.

The most memorable, for him, being the time he searched up and down the four floors he has access to, had his blood pressure through the roof, only to finally unlock the projector room to find the android there, sprawled in a seat, marathoning rom-coms.

“It’s research,” he emphasizes, not even turning to look at Kun.

His blood pressure goes up another 20 values.

-

This time, it’s not him that goes to Earth.

The clone goes, takes all the necessary equipment, his book, and a notebook. To write behaviors on, he says. Kun nods along, barely registering. He’s never been a religious person, but he’s nervous enough about the future of the samples he’s ready to vibrate out of his skin, so maybe it’s time to adopt a faith. Find a god and pray.

“Want me to bring something back?” He asks Kun, fingers playing with the end of his sleeve, slipping under, touching his pulse point. It lingers there.

“Only what you’re already supposed to.”

-

The clone, naturally, does not listen. He comes back, he’s brought what he should, and one bit he shouldn’t. In a ziplock bag there are a few lilies cut off at the stem, still dewy, probably collected in the early morning. The droplets on their petals catch the light in every movement, shine like diamonds.

Kun holds the bag with two sets of gloves on his hands.

“This isn’t safe. You weren’t supposed to bring this.”

The android only grins at him. “The book said giving flowers is romantic.”

“I don’t know what you’re playing at. Romantic? Are you trying to woo me?”

“I do not understand this word.”

“Romance, court. You know, _woo_.”

“Then yes. I also found them a very fine specimen.”

Kun stares at it – at him – for what must be a full minute. “You’re not what I intended you to be. Is ‘very fine specimen’ from one of your books? I didn’t code that in.”

“Of course not,” he says back. “I’m better than you intended. Consider it a thank you.”

He’s closer now. A few centimeters apart. If they were both human, they’d be sharing oxygen, but as it is, the shared air between them is warmed only by Kun’s breaths. He looks down, then slowly back up, right into Kun’s eyes, and Kun has never been more thankful for the faux contacts turning its eyes the darkest of browns as in this moment. Darker than his own, reflects no light. The only difference in an otherwise perfect replica of his face.

He is, maybe, regretting that decision.

“Let me try something new,” it tells him.

It’s all the warning he gets. It’s less than the warning he needs. In the next second the android has slotted his lips against his own. It’s a hard press, and through his surprise, his senses narrow down to just touch; the lips, a hand that’s reached the small of his back, another traveling up and down his left arm in a caress that’s not light enough.

To an outsider, he’d look like the artificial one.

It registers that this is supposed to be a kiss. He raises his hands, doesn’t have enough time to push it away, touches air. It’s stepped back on its own, turned, is already at the door.

Kun finds it a bit rude that he’s standing there, in shock, confusion, disorientation, and all its synonyms, while it _bails_. The door to the lab swings closed with a barely audible click, the measures to leave the samples undisturbed in place. Kun wishes it had slammed.

The bag with the lilies stays on the floor.

***

FOUR.

In Cali, he abuses the fact that nobody will notice his absence to stay a few more days. A puppet show takes up most of an afternoon, sitting on a plastic chair in the other end of the street, trying to ignore a body being eaten by two dogs by the corner, snouts ruby red. Staring at the kids who are staring at the man moving the puppet, transfixed.

Kun videotapes it. He’s not sure if he’ll show it to anyone, but it’s a rare display of regular life among the chaos. There’s an alternate reality in which he’s not in self-imposed exile in a laboratory, doing his best impression of Atlas. In which the sun shines bright and the average life expectancy didn’t drop by almost a decade, and the biggest problem of a school aged kid is whether you want to go out with someone because you like-like them or because you feel sorry for them or because they’re popular, and not how to avoid seeing the death you see outside the family inside of it.

-

The android greets him by all but jumping on him. Each day that passes it feels like he spends more and more minutes with an artificial hand somewhere on his body, or a thigh pressed against his, or being turned into a pillow as he works, so Kun has no reaction to it, anymore.

He does, however, gasp when he pulls back and it’s his own face staring at him, made up. Made up, but not prettily. It’s sloppy, coats of mascara on the lashes, some smudged on the cheekbone, bright orange eyeshadow and a brighter pink lipstick.

“I had fun,” the clone tells him.

“I can see that,” Kun says. It comes out more resigned than intended. He is more resigned than intended. “Whose is it?”

“No idea. People _really_ should learn to lock their doors more securely, it took me less than ten minutes to get in. But look, we look different now!”

He’s transgressing, and Kun knows he’s transgressing, and he should turn him off and let him in the corner because that’s his body and face he’s using to snoop around. He has broken at least three laws, but the work has been moving faster than ever, he submitted something to the next lab to test on a living organism rather than simulations, something he’s positive won’t land in death.

***

FIVE.

He returns from his trip to Guangzhou pleased with the variety of his findings.

That should be the first indication, the lack of heavy feelings. He’s never been a pessimist, but every time a body gets eaten out from the inside the pendulum starts swinging the other direction, and he can hear the ticking time bomb.

The second indication should be the empty lab.

Kun walks down the corridor, up the stairs to his quarters. There’s no surprising the android, and the sound of reunion isn’t always a melodic one.

He turns the doorknob, feather-light touch mimicking the current feather-light touches of happiness in his chest. “Honey, I’m home.”

The android looks up from a book and smiles. Below his neck, his clothes are drenched in crimson.

-

Below that, in front of what constitutes as his bed, is the body of an ex-General. He doesn’t know his name, but he knows the gossip.

-

Kun’s knuckles on the doorknob turn white. His vision, black.

-

This has blindsided him. That, on its own, is surprising enough. He has contingency plans, contingency plans for the contingency plans, and contingency plans for _those_. The universe is unpredictable, but always unpredictable to a degree that Kun is aware of, one he can measure and one he can avoid.

One hand covering his mouth, Kun gets to the archives. Space Station Law is still muddy, too many heads of too many countries and too many rich people too used to getting their ways, but there is a printed, nine-hundred-fifty-six page tome that exists.

He flips to the entry for murder. It’s frustratingly sparse. The title is there, ‘IN THE EVENT OF HOMICIDE’, the follow-up telling him nothing about trials, legal defense. It does tell him that ‘ _the penalty will be harsh_ ’, whatever that means.

He draws in a breath. Draws another, and another, until his heartbeat isn’t trying to rival a formula one car on the racetracks. The book snaps closed.

He’s not getting dealt _any_ penalties, at all. Not now. He drags the body to the same cubicle that just brought him back from Earth. It’s one out of three. It will be missed.

Kun authorizes it for a trip into the Pacific Ocean.

Turns out, a human body with half a skeleton and drained of its liquids is much lighter.

-

The android is still there, in his quarters. The blood is still there, too.

“Hey, baby,” it says, just as Kun closes the door behind him, draws him into a kiss. The smoothness of its lips has never felt so artificial.

“Hey,” he says back. “You didn’t clean.”

“Should I have?”

“It’ll stain.”

“Okay. I think we should do it together. You never coded me for removing stains.”

***

PLUS ONE.

On a quiet morning in the lab almost a month later, after less than five hours of sleep, Kun recognizes he should hold more than annoyance over the fact that someone got killed. Not someone he knew, not someone dear, but still, _someone_. It’s a realization that’s unpoetic, all things considered. Arrived as he was wiping down the table with disinfectant.

He doesn’t. Feel anything more than annoyance, that is.

When he was in high school, his best friend at the time decided he wanted to be an actor. He did it, and he did well enough. Kun remembers that annoyance, too, unjustified but present every time he picked up a local newspaper that advertised the plays going up for the week. His mom was a biologist, his dad taught organic chemistry to a bunch of sleepy-eyed college students at eight AM on weekdays. He followed that science path.

He recognized, years later, that the annoyance was birthed from his eyes being trained forward all the time, to the point he didn’t notice that the path created divergences naturally. Divergences he could follow, if he just turned his body a few degrees, changed his step, saw that the keys are dangling from his hands and there’s no chained door in the way.

Recognized the luck and recognized the missed opportunities. Mourned them, for a second.

Kun sees, at this moment, with the android sleeping on the floor less than ten meters away, that what his issue is now is the same. This is an action he could have taken himself.

But it’s one that he didn’t. That’s the dichotomy, the line in the sand, that holds the weight.

-

He tells the android they’re going to Earth together, after that. A statement.

“You do not trust me,” it says. “Okay.” A statement back.

-

It’s a silent journey for the most part. The first words get spoken when they’re barely outside the stratosphere.

“You see me,” it tells Kun. “I know you do. But you don’t let anyone else do so.”

“You were meant to help with research. You’d be the researcher when I meet my end. You’d live your full human life soon enough!” His voice climbs in volume. That’s not what he wanted.

It remains without expression. “You see me, but you do not understand. I’m not trying to be human. I’m trying to _be_. I needed to know I exist, that’s all. I’m physically here because you made me physically here, but I am not human. I needed to know,” it says, “that my existence continues when the existence of my observer has ceased.”

Kun hates himself for having no response. He just… Looks at it, and it looks back. He hates himself for understanding and hates himself more for hearing those words slip past something wearing his face. The face that he put there.

“You didn’t have to resort to murder.”

“But you didn’t care for it. This is you assessing the danger and deciding I’m too big a risk for the reward, not your moral compass speaking. You see me, because you are me.”

-

That is the end of it, isn’t it?

-

The sky in Oslo is as grey as ever. Clouds as heavy as the ache in his sternum.

“The trees are different here,” it says.

-

Kun files his resignation report over and over in his dream, in a hut under the stars. The next day, Dr. Dong Sicheng of the Microbiology Section is arrested for the murder of a high ranking officer.

-

Two months after that, the one covered in crimson is Kun himself.


End file.
